


In this Storm

by in48frames



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:59:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7217938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in48frames/pseuds/in48frames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near the end of season one, Felicity is getting used to being on Team Arrow when she suddenly discovers a strange connection to a girl on the other side of the world. Sara is going about her life in Nanda Parbat and doesn't expect to be reminded of home in such a bizarre way. Yet, somehow, it ends up being exactly what they both needed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In this Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, there's this movie on Netflix called In Your Eyes (2014) and the synopsis* (just like my synopsis) doesn't do it justice but it's a great love story and a great AU. This story follows the plot of Arrow, mostly, so it's not a full AU, and not a full canon divergence. This particular Nanda Parbat is 100% my own invention and I didn't even watch the episodes from S3 when they're there so hopefully you can go with it. And Nyssa unfortunately is out of the current picture, though they have some sort of history.
> 
> * "Two strangers on opposite ends of the country have a telepathic bond that lets each one see what the other sees, a deep connection that leads to love."

XXX

_If I could face them, if I could make amends with all my shadows,  
I'd bow my head and welcome them._

The first time it happens, Sara is sitting on a mat on the floor of her cell in Nanda Parbat, meditating. Instead of the dark behind her eyes, she sees a brightly sunlit city street, bustling with people, and she hears it too, hears cars honking and a distant siren and the grumble of the crowd. She thinks it must be a vision or a hallucination—it looks like home, so that would make near enough sense, although the things she sees in her head never look this vivid—until she hears the other woman’s voice, like it’s right next to her ear.

“Oh God, oh no, oh my God,” she says under her breath as the vision swerves to the side, a woman’s hand reaching out and groping for the wall of a storefront, curses from the people she just cut off. “I can’t see, oh this is bad, I’m too young to have a stroke, why can’t I see?”

Tentatively, and wondering if she’s completely broken her mind at last, Sara whispers, “Hey, are you okay?”

“ _What?_ ” the other voice says sharply, and then, “Okay, I’m hallucinating, that’s not great but it’s temporary, if I’m hallucinating a voice maybe I’m hallucinating blindness too.”

Sara opens her eyes, expecting the vision to change, but instead she just hears a gasp as the hand in her vision reaches out in front of her. She can see the wall in front of her, too, like a double-exposure on a photograph, but the bright light of the street is primary.

“What is that, why am I seeing that.”

“I just opened my eyes, so… are you seeing a stone wall?”

“What—who—why—“

“There’s a small wooden table, and a lattice of stone that passes for a window.”

“Okay. My hallucination knows what I’m hallucinating. That makes sense.”

“The thing is, I don’t think I’m a hallucination. I’m a real person.”

“Okay… a hallucination would say that.”

“Fair enough.”

A moment of silence, and then the voice sighs and says, “Where _are_ you, if you’re a real person? Is that, like, a museum?”

Sara laughs a little bit, without much humour. “No, I live here. It’s like… kind of like a monastery? I was meditating when you…”

“You live in a monastery, so you’re like a monk? But you’re a woman, and you have an American accent… you aren’t in the U.S., are you?”

“No, but I’m from there. A place called Starling City.”

Another silence. “That’s a vote in favour of hallucination. I’m in Starling City right now.”

“Yeah, I thought it looked familiar. But you know, you could be _my_ hallucination. That would make a lot more sense, considering…”

“Considering what? And where _are_ you?”

“The time difference is exactly twelve hours, but that’s all I can tell you.”

“What, it’s like a _secret_ monastery? Actually, you know what, forget I asked. We’ve all got secrets, right?” Her voice somehow manages to reach higher, and if she wasn’t on the edge of hysteria before she certainly is now.

“ _Ta-er al-Sahfer_?”

Sara looks up and her vision suddenly clears, the only sounds the familiar ones of the echoing hall of cells and the only person in her sights the nervous, deferential young trainee standing in the open doorway with a tray of food. She feels a niggling at the back of her mind but ignores it, greeting him and instructing him to place the tray on the table.

She eats quickly and places the tray in the doorway before sitting back down on her mat, crossing her legs and reaching out to the niggle, murmuring, “Are you there?”

“I’m here,” the voice says immediately, and Sara sees the grey walls of an office, dropping down to a desk and the woman’s hand reaching out, groping for the phone, hitting mute and holding it to her ear. “Where did you go?”

“Someone came in and it just cut out. I could kind of feel you in the back of my mind but I could stop you from coming through. We should, um, practice, if this is going to be a thing. So I don’t see anything you don’t want me to.”

“And vice versa.”

“Right. Um, and I guess we should… talk. I don’t know, this is really weird.”

“I’m at work now, uh… when do you sleep? If I’m free between seven and eight, will you be up?”

“Yeah, I can make that work. I’ll try.” They don’t exactly have clocks in the cells, or daylight, but she knows she’ll be awake and hopes she won’t be in the middle of a training session. She’s just come back from a mission a few days ago so her schedule is lighter than usual, hence the meditation and eating in her cell. Well, that and she’s one of the best Ra’s has, can usually set her own schedule and eat wherever the hell she wants, as long as she keeps up, which is never a problem.

She lies down on her sleeping mat and stares at the ceiling and thinks about what a dangerous gift she’s just been given. She could use a person to talk to, honestly; yes, she’s lonely, she can admit that to herself. But what if this innocent girl—she doesn’t even know her name, but she lives in Starling City and works in a gray office, how much more innocent can she be—comes in at the wrong time, sees her beat a man to death with her staff or slit a man’s throat. If she manages to keep her innocent, she still has no way to explain the life she lives.

Maybe it had been a fluke. For now, she’ll assume that, just long enough to fall asleep.

XXX

_But I feel it burning like when the winter wind stops my breathing;_  
_are you really going to love me when I'm gone?_  
_I fear you won't; I fear you don't._

By 7pm, Felicity is back in her apartment and finished her takeout dinner. She’s spent the entire day thinking and wondering about the mysterious girl in her head, and as soon as the clock on her phone ticks over she reaches out with her mind, finding herself in the same stone room as that morning. “Hey," she says.

“Hi,” the other woman says, and she sounds… she almost sounds like she’s smiling. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work, I thought maybe once I slept the world would return to sanity.”

“No such luck, but maybe I have to sleep too? Or maybe we both have to sleep at the same time.”

The woman laughs and then cuts off with a cough, her tone more serious when she says, “I really can’t be laughing here.”

“God, that sounds awful. Is there anywhere you’re allowed to laugh?”

“Yeah, I can… maybe I can find a better place for these talks. They don’t really train us for… this.”

“I’m insanely curious, but I won’t ask.”

“Thank you. Is that your apartment?”

“Yeah.” Felicity has been sitting on the couch, facing the window, and now she gets up to cross over to it. “Not a bad view. You want a tour?”

“God, yes, please. There’s only so much grey a girl can take, you know?”

“I’m picturing living in my office and, yeah. Anyway—“ She looks around the room, not really sure how fast or slow to move her eyes. “—this is the living room. It’s bright, which is just what I need after spending nine hours in that office, but, sorry, you—I mean, I’m not complaining.” She keeps walking, looking in on her tiny kitchen, glancing at the tinier bathroom, before turning into her bedroom and doing a three-sixty and then flopping down on the bed.

“You’re neat,” the woman says, and Felicity sighs.

“I don’t spend much time here anymore. It’s, um.” Secrets. Right.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

She barks a laugh, before wincing at the thought of that sound inside someone else’s head. “Sorry. No. A second job.”

“Okay. Are you hiding a secret kid somewhere or do you just hate yourself?”

“The latter, it seems. It’s kind of, you know, complicated.”

“A _secret_ second job, then,” the woman says, repeating her own words back to her with a teasing lilt, and Felicity can’t help but smile.

She walks over to the window, the view only marginally different from the one in her living room, but maybe this woman misses home. It’s dark by now, and all you can really see is the reflection of the room and a smattering of city lights.

“Hey,” the woman says suddenly. “Sorry if this is weird, and I know I can’t exactly return the favour, but, um. Do you have a mirror?”

“Oh,” Felicity says. “Yeah, of course.” Her full-length mirror is on the opposite wall, next to her closet door, and she starts across the room. “I’m still in my work clothes, but these days I’m kind of… always in my work clothes, so.” Just to the side of it she hesitates, reaching one hand out to trace along the frame and mumbling to herself, “This feels like a first date.”

The woman laughs, and Felicity realizes a moment too late that she might have to find a way to curb her habit of saying every thought out loud.

“Wait,” she says, stepping in front of the mirror. “Can you hear my thoughts?”

“Um,” the woman says. “I don’t think so. Not yet. Can you hear what I’m thinking right now?”

Felicity narrows her eyes, trying to focus her thoughts through the weird link between their minds, but there’s just distant background noise and the dark screen she sees when the woman has her eyes closed.

“Can you look at yourself?”

“Right, sorry.” Felicity meets her own eyes in the mirror, then sweeps her gaze up to the top of her head and down over her body. It’s weird. She looks the same as she does every day, the same as everyone at work sees her, and Oliver and Diggle too, but letting someone else see her through her own eyes is… weird. It does feel like a first date. She’s nervous.

“Do you want my first date appraisal?” the woman asks, and for a second Felicity thinks maybe she _can_ hear her thoughts, but then she realizes it’s a fair question and also really, um—terrifying. Her eyes widen, and she swallows hard, and the woman laughs, low.

It shouldn’t be sexy. It really, really shouldn’t be sexy, and she doesn’t even know what this woman looks like, or her name, but it’s right in her ear and, God.

She swallows hard again and says, incredibly redundantly, “No, nope, definitely not, no no no, I do not, that is a thing I don’t want.”

The woman laughs again, and Felicity can hear the smile in her voice when she says, “I’m only kidding. I don’t think they’ve perfected dating via psychic link yet.”

“Plus I don’t even know what you look like, or your name, and you, um.” Not helping her case.

The woman goes quiet for a minute, and Felicity turns away from the mirror, going back to sit on her bed and scrunching up her face.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying, I mean I wasn’t hinting, I mean you can have your privacy. All the privacy you want. That’s fine.”

“I don’t know your name, either,” she says quietly, and Felicity doesn’t hesitate.

“Felicity. Smoak. I have a day job, so that’s not—wait. I mean, neither of my jobs require… I mean, that’s my name, don’t wear it out.” She squeezes her eyes shut, bringing her hands up to cover her face, and the woman laughs _again_.

“I really won’t be able to talk to you here if you keep that up. I have, um. Okay. I’m sure you aren’t going to run around telling people about the woman who lives in your head, but if I tell you my name, you really—can’t mention it to anyone, okay? Like, ‘My friend so-and-so told me…’ Whatever. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Felicity says seriously, while sternly instructing her brain to keep that information in the very small vault of information that doesn’t get blurted out at random. She’s managed with Oliver, so. “Of course.”

“Sara,” she says very quietly, and Felicity holds her breath for a second. “My name is Sara.”

“Sara,” Felicity breathes. “Okay. Nice to meet you, Sara.”

“Nice to meet you too, Felicity Smoak.”

They shut down the connection, or whatever, and Felicity goes to the lair while Sara goes… wherever it is she goes. Sitting down in front of her computers, Felicity focuses on the job at hand, doing the fast typity thing and the earpiece talkity thing. It’s kind of weird adjusting to Oliver’s voice in her ear after having Sara’s voice kind of… _inside_ her ear, but she manages.

And she keeps managing right up until the instant she’s tracking a signal and talking to Oliver and she gets slammed in the side, the force of the hit sending her chair flying and knocking her off of it, onto the floor. She spins around to face her attacker, but there’s nothing there. Absolutely nothing. What the hell.

“Felicity? Felicity, what’s going on? Are you okay? Felicity! I’m turning around.”

The earpiece is half-way out of her ear, and she slaps her hand against it, saying quickly, “No, don’t turn around, I’m fine.” She pushes up off the floor, looking around again as she rolls her chair back in front of her desk. The pain is still there, just under her ribs, and she tugs her blouse up to check for a mark, but as she’s doing it the pain is fading out until she just has the echo of it in her mind. “I just… slipped. Take a right at the next corner.”

She spends the rest of the night slightly off her game, searching for Sara in her head even as she keeps her focus on the task in front of her. It’s three hours later and Oliver has just returned to the lair when she feels that niggling and yells a goodbye, racing up the stairs with her purse under her arm.

When she’s locked in her car she reaches out and says frantically, “Are you okay?”

“What?” Sara sounds out of breath. “What do you mean?”

Maybe Felicity was wrong. “You didn’t—get hit, or something? In the side?”

There’s a long silence. “Why do you ask?”

“I felt it. I got knocked off my chair. If it wasn’t you—“

“No, it was me. Damn it.”

Felicity frowns. She’s not entirely sure why Sara sounds—angry? Frustrated? “I was working, I swear I—thought I was completely closed off. I don’t know what happened.”

Sara sighs. “It must be a physical thing, past a certain threshold you can’t just block it out. God damn it. Have you ever felt that before?”

“Not really, I mean I used to have nightmares, but… have you been _hit_ like that before? Is that a regular occurrence? Is that why you’re…”

Another silence. Another sigh. “I need to think for a minute. Why don’t you go to bed, we’ll talk again… before you go to work, I guess.”

“Sara, do I need to be worried?”

“I don’t have an answer for that, Felicity, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, it’s—we’ll figure it out, right? Whatever it is, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

“I’ll talk to you in a few hours,” Sara says, ignoring her attempt at reassurance. “Just grab me whenever you’re up.”

XXX

_And it echoes when I breathe ‘til all you'll see is my ghost:  
empty vessel, crooked teeth; wish you could see._

Standing in her cell, Sara lifts her shirt again, checking the mark on her side. It’s purpling quickly, tender to the touch, and makes it hard to bend or twist in that direction.

It had been her own stupid fault. She’d thought she could focus long enough for a sparring session, but thoughts of Felicity seemed to swell up every time she spun and struck, spun and blocked. Her partner was highly skilled, and likely would have pulled back in time if it hadn’t been such a rookie mistake, dodging the wrong way and straight into his staff. His skill is the reason she only has a bruised side and not a broken rib, she knows that and she’s ashamed.

But that—that’s just part of her life. Her pain threshold is sky high because she needs to be able to take the hits and keep going, complete her mission every damn time and not end up the one dead on the floor. That’s why she’d kept sparring for another hour before spending two on strength training.

Felicity, though. She isn’t trained for this. This isn’t her life. If Felicity is taking her pain… Sara’s lost. She hasn’t faced a dilemma like this in years. Here, she does her job, keeps herself alive, follows Ra’s, and that’s all. The people they kill, there are always reasons. They are never innocent.

Felicity is innocent. Sara can’t let her get hurt, but what other option does she have? She can’t leave the League; no one can. She can’t kill herself, not without knowing how that will impact Felicity, not when her family is still out there.

She tries to meditate, hoping she might find an answer in the void, but when she closes her eyes she sees Felicity again. She looks even more innocent than she sounds, ponytail and glasses and business attire, and, God, if Sara were anyone else and any _where_ else…

Felicity is so far from the type of girl Sara usually goes for, when she’s got a night off in Hong Kong or Delhi and she just wants to fuck it out, but maybe a change would be nice after a million years in this place. (Some part of her has been counting the days, months, years, but it feels like a million and she’d rather exaggerate than think about how long she’s actually been doing this.) She has no way of knowing what kind of girl she’d go for if she’d lived a normal life, if she were in a normal place now.

Not that it matters, not that it could ever possibly happen, but now instead of meditating she’s picturing the dates she would take Felicity on, something casual where Sara would wear jeans for the first time in—a million years, a fancy dinner where Felicity would wear a beautiful dress, and—they aren’t encouraged to daydream. Why think about being somewhere else when you know you never will be? Why think about being happy when you know you never will be?

But no one can see inside her mind—not even Felicity—so instead of meditating she pictures the dates she would take Felicity on, and her heart is torn between desire and despair. It’s too close to home—literally, literally too close to home, and it makes her want all the things she’d forced herself to forget she wanted.

Sara spends the rest of the day walking up and down the halls. She walks away from the cells and the training rooms, down darkened hallways with dust in the corners, and eventually she finds a storage room tucked away, door unlocked, and manages to jam the door closed behind her. Suddenly she’s alone, and it’s odd. Their cells don’t have doors, the bathrooms are communal, and the training rooms always have at least one other person working, whether it’s three A.M. or four P.M.

There isn’t really anything to sit on, so she sweeps a square of floor clear with a piece of cardboard and sits down there. She thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and then Felicity reaches out and she inhales deeply, her shoulders dropping.

“Hey,” Felicity says, and she’s in the kitchen, making coffee.

“Good morning,” Sara says, and even though she’s spent the entire day trying to figure out a way to not die, her voice is bright.

“Where’s that?” She puts a slice of bread in the toaster.

“Some storage room. I’ll keep quiet, but I’ve got a little privacy.”

“That’s good. How’s your side?” Grabs a pan from a tall cupboard and puts it on the burner.

“Fine. Just a bad bruise. I think… if anyone asks, I’m going to say I bruised my rib and can’t… do what I usually do.”

“Because of me?” Turns to pick up a dish of butter, adding some to the pan.

“Because of this thing between us. I won’t be the cause of your pain.”

“It was only a couple seconds. Other than falling out of my chair, I don’t think it was that big a deal.” Pulls a carton of eggs from the fridge, cracking two into a bowl and scrambling them.

“One, I doubt you thought that as it was happening, and two, that was an extremely minor injury. No. Not happening.”

Felicity stops moving, her fork in the bowl of eggs and her other hand braced on the counter. “Sorry. What? That was a minor injury, as in, you’ve had worse? As in, you think you’ll have worse again, and don’t want me to feel it. What constitutes _worse_?”

Sara closes her eyes, taking slow breaths, then blinks up at the ceiling, not that she can see it in the dark. “Anything that breaks the skin, or a bone.”

“Which you’ve had before and expect to have again. Okay. Okay. Monastery of violence. Secret monastery of violence. Right. Okay.”

“Hey, take a deep breath. I’m not going to let you get hurt. I’ll just… I’ll figure out a way. Out of here. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

“You can’t walk out.”

“No.”

“You know, I have friends. I might not be much to look at but I’m friends with the Hood, I have—there’s people. Maybe I can help you, or at least… tell your family?”

“My family stays out of this,” Sara says tightly. “I’d rather stay dead than have them mourn me a second time.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Listen, you’re very sweet—and I mean that sincerely, I’m not trying to patronize you—but I’m the only one who can get myself out of this. If—if I can. Please, you can’t say anything to anyone.”

“No, I won’t. I promise.” She moves slowly back to her eggs, pouring them into the pan and adding salt and pepper. “If nothing else, or more like, even though I can’t do anything else… I’m here, okay?”

Sara laughs a little, hopelessly. “Yeah. Um… that said… and not to, not to be weird—“

“Sara.”

“Maybe you could go look in the mirror for a minute?”

Felicity looks down at her eggs, gives them a stir, then walks back into her bedroom and stands in front of the mirror. She meets her own eyes, leaning in and bracing her hands on the frame, then looks down over her body. Her outfit is simple, a grey dress that hangs off her frame just a little, still showing her curves, and Sara rests her cheek on her palm, sighing.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

Felicity’s eyes widen, flying back up to her own in the reflection, and she looks so much like a frightened doe that Sara laughs softly.

“Do you not know that?”

Felicity gives her a look, or as much as she can when she’s giving a look to her reflection in the mirror, and goes back into the kitchen to rescue her eggs. “I don’t hear it often. At least, not from people other than my mom.”

“You don’t date?”

Poking at the eggs, turning chunks over and pushing them around, Felicity hums a little. “I don’t have time to date.”

“Okay. In your entire life?”

A pause, and then she says, “I don’t want to talk about it,” grabbing a plate down from a cupboard and dumping her eggs from the pan onto the plate.

“That’s fine. I just think you should know that you’re—incredibly beautiful.”

Stilling with both hands on the counter, on either side of her plate, Felicity takes an audible breath in and out and then says, “Your first date appraisal?” Sara laughs a little, smirking alone in the dark, and Felicity says, “No?”

“I’m not much for first dates, really, although for you I might make an exception. I’m a lot better at skipping the date altogether and…” She clears her throat. “But my life isn’t built for dating, either.”

“If you were here…” Felicity says, and it sounds like she’s holding her breath.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Sara replies, voice low. “I still don’t know how I’m going to get away from here. Speaking of which, I should go be seen. Nothing good comes of a disappearing act.”

“Okay, I’m going into work. If you want to talk when you get up… you know where to find me.”

Making her way back to the cells, Sara memorizes her path and checks that the dust isn’t thick enough to show prints. Her dinner is waiting in her cell, cold, and she eats quickly, wanting to be asleep. She doesn’t feel any closer to a solution and she needs to shut her brain off for a while.

XXX

_And they call me under, and I'm shaking like a leaf,  
and they call me under, and I wither underneath in this storm._

A few days pass, and somehow, this all becomes a part of Felicity’s routine. She doesn’t know how to help Sara, how to say anything of use, so they just talk, like old friends and new friends at once. When Felicity wakes up, they chat while she makes her breakfast, and after she eats dinner they hang out in her apartment for a while before she goes to the lair, and most nights they talk until she falls asleep, too.

It’s too much, maybe; she’s getting comfortable, but at the same time she knows this could end, and it could end with Sara’s death. How would she cope with that?

Then again, what choice does she have? The woman is inside her head.

Things reach a boiling point one night in the lair. Oliver is frustrated about something and taking it out on her, which means, as usual, she pushes back against him and builds up a full head of steam.

It isn’t until she hears Sara’s voice say, “Ollie?” that she realizes in all her righteous anger she’s left a gap in her mental walls.

“What?” Felicity says, and Oliver stares at her, furrowing his brow, but she waves him off.

“Oliver. You know Oliver Queen?”

She puts her finger to her ear, like maybe she forgot to take out her earpiece and her mom just called and the Bluetooth connected and, whatever, it’s a tenuous cover but she turns her back on Oliver and walks to the other side of the room. “Yeah, I know him. I work with him.”

“Oh my God,” Sara says, and it’s half a sob. “I’m sorry, I just—I didn’t expect—oh God.” She’s fully crying now, Felicity can hear her sniffles and sobs, and she doesn’t know what to do.

“Sara, what’s wrong? What is it?”

“You can’t say my name!” she snaps frantically, and Felicity shrinks. “Don’t ever say my name around him.”

“What? I haven’t, I never have. What is it? Please, just tell me.”

Still crying, Sara says, “Get your phone. Go somewhere he can’t see. Search Sara Lance and Oliver Queen. That’s all you’ll need.” She sobs again and Felicity races back to her desk, picks up her phone and rushes into the lair bathroom, locking the door and sitting down on the closed toilet.

Opening up Google, she types in the names and instantly has a page of articles, everything from CNN to TMZ, blog posts and conspiracy theory websites. The top news articles are in chronological order and start with _QUEEN PATRIARCH AND HEIR LOST AT SEA. PATRIARCH AND HEIR TO QUEEN CONGLOMERATE MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD. OLIVER QUEEN FOUND ALIVE AND WELL, MISSING FOR FIVE YEARS._

None of the headlines mention Sara, so Felicity clicks into each one and uses the ‘find’ function. _Sara Lance, friend of the Queen family, was also aboard and is presumed dead. Sara Lance, passenger aboard the Queen family yacht, is still missing and presumed dead. Oliver Queen gave no comment when asked about the possibility that Sara Lance, aboard when the yacht sank, might also still be alive._

Scrolling down further, she finds one of the TMZ articles. _FEUD OVER QUEEN HEIR ENDS IN TRAGEDY!_ It details the relationship between Oliver and Laurel and how Laurel only found out he was cheating on her with her sister when they were both lost at sea and presumed dead.

“Holy shit,” Felicity whispers. “How did they even get this information?” She scrolls back up to the top of the page, where there’s a picture of Oliver and Laurel at some fancy event and a family photo of Laurel and Sara together. She zooms in on Sara’s face. “Do you still look like this?”

“Not really,” Sara says, sniffling a little. “She was naïve and innocent, which is kind of ironic when you consider what she –what I did. Plus there were the ill-advised bangs.”

“Still beautiful,” Felicity murmurs, staring at the picture.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wasn’t—I wasn’t a good person, and I guess the truth is I’ve only gotten worse. I didn’t want you to know who I really was—am.”

“You are a good person, Sara.”

“You don’t know me.”

That hurts, but she can’t argue with it. She can’t really say anything about it at all, so she gets up from the toilet lid and says, “How about a distraction?”

“Yeah?”

Turning to the mirror, she braces her hands on the counter and leans in, looking at herself and then reaching up to toy with the top button of her blouse. Sara inhales sharply, and Felicity slips the button through, undoing the next two and then dropping her hand back to the counter, pressing her arms to her sides and leaning forward a little more.

“Is this…” she starts, staring at her own cleavage. “Am I being ridiculous?”

“No,” Sara says quickly, all breath. “No, you’re being very… uh, very… generous.”

“I have to get back to work,” Felicity murmurs, “but…” She undoes the rest of the buttons, tugging the shirt out from where it’s tucked into her skirt and pushing the material behind her, drawing her hands up the sides so the front of her torso is bare, keeping the fabric back on either side of her bra.

“God, Felicity,” Sara breathes, and Felicity would close her eyes at the sound of it if that wouldn’t defeat the purpose. “I want…”

“I know,” she murmurs, breathing slow, careful breaths, and the bang at the door a second later makes her practically jump out of her skin and Sara is gone.

“Felicity! Are you okay? I need you.”

Blowing out a breath, she looks at herself in the mirror and shakes her head, swallowing hard. “Yeah, just give me a minute,” she calls back, starting on her buttons. She has to take several deep breaths, fumbling with her shirt, and it’s inconceivable to her that a moment that intense could have come of… a voice in her head. God.

Before unlocking the door to get back to work, she picks up her phone and saves the picture of Sara and Laurel, going into her gallery and cropping it to Sara’s face. Then she hides the file and locks her phone.

It’s a Friday, so they work late, and she sleeps late into Saturday morning, so she doesn’t hear from Sara again until seven o’clock that night, when she’s just finished dinner and she’s curled up on the couch for a minute before going to the lair.

“Felicity?” Sara whispers.

“I’m here. Are you okay?” She can see the storage room, but Sara still speaks as softly as she can, like she’s afraid of being overheard.

“I’m, um. I… requested an assignment. They’ll send me out this week, I’m not sure what day yet. I’m…” She drops her voice even lower, and Felicity doesn’t think she would be able to make out the words at all if she weren’t as close as it’s possible to be. “I’m not coming back here.”

“Okay,” Felicity breathes. “Where are you going to go?”

Sara sobs a laugh. “I have to come home,” she murmurs. “They’ll go after my family when they can’t find me. I have to come home and protect them.”

“Okay, Sara, I have to tell Oliver—wait,” she says, before Sara can even try to interrupt. “Listen to me. Have you heard of the Hood?”

“When I checked the news in Starling, yeah, a little. Vigilante, bow and arrow, green leather. Oh, God. The hood. I should have known. Oliver?”

“Oliver and me and our friend Diggle. He’s better at this stuff, okay, he might be able to help you. If you’re coming back here anyway, he needs some warning, he needs to prepare, and you… you need help, Sara.”

A long silence, then Sara says, “How are you going to explain us talking?”

“Shit.” Her brain quickly flicks through options, each more absurd than the last. Sara didn’t even know she knew Oliver, so why on Earth would she have contacted her? And how? “I’m thinking a good old fashioned ‘don’t ask how I know this, but…’ along with a little ‘some technology you will never understand.’”

Sara laughs, for real this time. “Does that usually work for you?”

“Oh yeah. Oliver has a very narrow focus, and no offense, but there is a _lot_ of technology he will never understand.”

She laughs again. “Why would that offend me?”

“I dunno, post-coital loyalty or… wow. That was inappropriate.”

“I can be loyal and think he’s an idiot at the same time.”

“Yep. Yeah. You—oh. That’s another thing.”

Sara waits, and when Felicity doesn’t go on she prompts, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, uh, Oliver… and Laurel.”

“Hm.”

“More like Oliver kind of unsuccessfully trying to woo Laurel back to him, but yeah.”

“That’s funny,” Sara says, but she’s not laughing.

“Funny?”

“Isn’t it?” She does laugh, then, a strange half-breath of a laugh. “I’m dead, so he…” That same laugh again. “I guess with me out of the way, it’ll all work out, right? Poor Ollie.”

“I can’t… I can’t tell if you’re upset, or…”

“No, honestly, it’s funny and a bit sad. I just know both of them so well, and they both… there are better things for them. Both of them. It’s sad.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Laurel was dating, um, Tommy Merlyn? They seemed pretty happy.”

“Oliver’s best friend. I saw some of that online but I didn’t… hm. Didn’t make the connection when Oliver returned. Wow, I missed all the good gossip, didn’t I?”

“I wasn’t sure if maybe… once you make it home… you and Oliver.”

Sara goes quiet and Felicity presses a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Sorry, it’s none of my—“

“No, I, uh, I was just wondering how the…” She clears her throat. “The whole… psychic link thing…”

“Oh, God!” Felicity picks up a pillow and presses it to her face, shaking her head back and forth and wishing for brain bleach. “I did not need that in my head!”

“Sorry.” Sara laughs, and it doesn’t escape Felicity that those real, genuine laughs always seem to be caused by _her_. “I’m really not interested in finding out. Not to get ahead of ourselves again, but if I make it home… if I make it to the other side of this… I was kind of hoping _you_ might be an option.”

Butterflies. “Yes. I mean, I’m not going anywhere. I mean, yeah, I’m available, I—I will be—I’m, uh, I’ll be right here. Any time.”

“Okay,” Sara says, smile in her voice. “Something to look forward to, then.”

“I have to go to work,” Felicity says softly. “Saturday nights are busy. I’ll try to figure out a way to talk to Oliver, and then… I have Sunday night off. I’ll talk to you then?”

“Okay. Good luck. And Felicity—please keep my family out of this.”

XXX

_I am a stranger, I am an alien inside a structure;_  
_are you really going to love me when I'm gone?_  
_With all my thoughts and all my faults._

Sara goes straight from the storage room to the track, running until lunch and then eating it in her cell. She sits and meditates—what she calls meditating, now, which for the last ten days exactly has been daydreaming about Felicity. It kind of has the same effect on her, except that her focus is less on pleasing Ra’s and more on getting home.

She spends the afternoon on strength training, hoping to make it clear that she’s set and ready for her next mission, has dinner and sleeps, and in reality she’s counting the hours until she can speak to Felicity again.

In the morning, she eats and pretends to meditate and walks very slowly and casually back to her storage room, jamming the door shut and reaching out immediately. Felicity is right there, and Sara closes her eyes, instantly breathing easier.

“Hi,” she says on an exhale, and she can hear Felicity’s smile in her reply. “I missed you.”

“It’s been less than a day,” she says teasingly.

“Sorry, I—“

“Don’t apologize. I missed you too.”

Sara sighs, pushing off from the door she’d practically collapsed against and finding her piece of cardboard. “How’d it go?”

“Not well.” Felicity’s curled up on her couch, a glass of wine in hand, and Sara gets the feeling it isn’t her first of the night. “We have very different modes of communication and they don’t always jive. And when he gets scared, he gets angry. He’s really worried about you.”

“Can’t blame him there.”

“He wants to know exactly who he should be expecting. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to tell me—“

“Once I’m on the move I can call him from a burner. We can talk strategy.”

“Sure.” Felicity takes a swig of wine. “Once you’re… on the move… I’ll try to keep my wavelengths open. It’ll be faster than trying to get you and Oliver in touch, and if you ever just… need me. Or someone to talk to. Or a pretty face.”

“That sounds like progress,” Sara says, leaning back against the wall. “You calling yourself pretty.”

“I didn’t say it would be _my_ face,” Felicity says, and Sara realizes she’s beaming ear-to-ear, which is absolutely absurd when she’s days away from escaping one of the deadliest organizations on planet earth.

Sobering slightly, she says, “You’re cute,” and Felicity catches the change in tone.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m trying not to be scared,” and maybe that was too honest, but what did it even matter now? She could be dead in a matter of days. “I know what I have to do, and I know how to detach enough to do it, but when I’m just sitting here… talking to you… and wanting things I haven’t been allowed to want in a long—in _years_ … I guess I’m scared.”

Felicity is silent for a moment, then she puts her glass down on the coffee table and rests her forearms on her thighs, hunching over. “Is there anything I can do?”

Sara can’t help but smile a little. “Maybe…” and Felicity laughs lightly, getting up and walking toward the bedroom.

“I honestly don’t even remember getting dressed this morning, so this should be an adventure.” When she gets there, it’s a tank top and yoga pants, and she says, “Yeah, that makes sense.” Her hair is down, though, and she looks more like a day on the couch than a day at the yoga studio; she looks _soft_ , and Sara just… wants.

She feels miserable, wanting and wanting and never having, and she’s edging close to tears when Felicity meets her own eyes in the mirror.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” Felicity says, and Sara is trying to decipher that when Felicity reaches for the hem of her top, lifting it up a few inches and pausing, like Sara might stop her, like Sara could even be capable of drawing the breath to speak in this moment.

Felicity tilts her head, licking her lips and biting at them, and she pulls the top off slowly, dragging it over her shoulders and over her head so that Sara can’t see anymore, until she gets it off and brushes a hand back through her hair. She straightens her glasses, and her hair is a little wild, and she’s wearing a regular push-up bra, and Sara is trying so hard to keep her breathing steady.

When Felicity places her hands on the waistband of her pants and pauses there, Sara whimpers a little, and she would be horrified at herself but she just can’t be bothered right now. She’s certain her breathing is audible, shaky little gasps and exhales, and when Felicity slides her pants down her legs, bending over to pull them off her feet and then standing before the mirror in bra and panties, Sara half-sobs, exhaling hard through her nose.

“I wish I could touch you,” she says, and Felicity puts her own hand on her stomach, stroking over the tiniest hint of belly fat, and Sara isn’t sure whether it’s imagination or psychic link but she could swear she feels it under her own hand. “Your skin is so soft,” she says, slipping her own hand under her shirt, stroking across her belly and then up over her breast.

Felicity follows her movement in the mirror, unclasping her bra and letting it drop to the floor, smoothing her hand over her breast, and when they pinch the nipple in unison Sara sobs again.

“You feel so good,” Felicity murmurs, and she eases down to sit on the floor, her legs bent in front of her and Sara watching her every move. She keeps one hand cupped around her breast, the other one smoothing up and down her torso and then toying with the waistband of her underwear.

Sara does the same, only she can’t wait, slipping her hand down and sliding one finger over herself, and Felicity gasps. She’s straining to keep her eyes open, and Sara can see her hand under the fabric of her underwear, stares for a long, tantalizing moment before saying, “You can close your eyes, baby. I feel you.”

Felicity whimpers, letting her eyes fall shut, and it’s dark behind both their eyelids now, as their hands move together, the sensation of their own fingers on themselves and the other woman’s touch intermingling, Felicity’s breathy moans in her ear and her own gasping cries. She comes with a sob, but the emptiness that usually follows sex is absent. She feels Felicity’s aftershocks, she hears her breathing steady out, but she also feels her inside, feels her heart beating.

She knows that if she speaks, Felicity will reply, but she doesn’t know what to say. She keeps her eyes closed and reaches for every shred of this link between them, every tiny sensation it can share with her. She can’t hold Felicity now, but she can wrap her mind around her. She doesn’t even know if that’s a thing.

Felicity opens her eyes, stares at herself in the mirror, curled up on the floor of her bedroom, and she just stares, and Sara stares with her.

“You should get up off the floor, baby,” Sara says gently.

“You’re on the floor.”

“I know, but you have such nice things to lie on. Such a nice bed.”

“Sara…” Felicity says, and she closes her eyes for a long moment before blinking them back open and meeting her own eyes in the reflection. “I think I love you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she says instantly, before she can even process what’s been said. She would normally leave it at that, but there’s a good chance she’ll be dying soon, and there’s a good chance Felicity will be dying with her, at least in part. “I wish you hadn’t been brought into this. I wish you could live a happy life far away from me or anything I’ve ever touched. But I can’t protect you, and… I do love you. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Felicity parrots back, very soft. She closes her eyes again, and Sara can feel that she’s about to fall asleep. “Don’t go. Please.”

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

XXX

_I feel it biting, I feel it break my skin, so uninviting._  
_Are you really going to need me when I'm gone?_  
_I fear you won't; I fear you don't._

When Felicity wakes up a little later, she can feel the carpet pressing deep into her skin and groans, sitting up and looking in the mirror to see the imprint of the wool along the side of her face and her entire body. Looking around for her tank top, she tugs it back on without a bra and levers herself up off the floor, crawling into bed and lying face down.

She hums, and Sara says quietly, “Good nap?”

“Better if you were here,” Felicity mumbles, and it’s all too easy to predict how Sara would reply to that. “I want to hope, Sara,” she adds. “I just want to believe it’s going to be okay. I want to believe I’m going to be able to touch you soon.”

“Okay,” Sara says, still quiet. “You can hope for both of us.”

Once Sara leaves the—monastery, or whatever, all routine and schedule go out the window. Felicity tries to focus on what’s in front of her, first one job and then the other, but she’s constantly searching for Sara, who comes in at random, in fits and starts. She comes in sometimes walking down a street, or moving through an airport, and Felicity never knows where she is, where she’s going, but she babbles nervously for a few minutes and Sara laughs and then she’s gone again.

Oliver is talking to her on burner phones, and he does it away from Felicity, Sara’s mind closed to her. They plan and strategize and one day Sara is just there, in the lair with them, and Felicity stares at her from her spot in front of the desk. They aren’t supposed to know each other, not the way they do, so she just stares until they’re finally alone together, a few hours later. Oliver and Diggle have gone out to do an initial perimeter check, and Sara is staying in the lair, for now, for safety.

Felicity stands up from her chair, never taking her eyes off Sara as the other woman closes the distance between them, walking forward until Felicity can reach up and hold Sara’s face in her hands. She was right about not looking like the picture anymore; the bright smile is gone, and her eyes are focused but haunted. There’s a darkness right on the surface, plain to see, but Felicity feels like she knows the girl underneath that, the one who still laughs and smiles and _loves_.

Sara moves forward again, cupping Felicity’s face in her hands and kissing her, and Felicity is briefly surprised to find that it doesn’t feel weird at all. Then she just loses herself in it, in the touch she’s been desperate for, wrapping her arms around behind Sara’s neck and kissing her like she’s been waiting her whole life to do it.

When Sara pulls back, when they’re both breathless and flushed, she says, “Sorry,” and Felicity shakes her head, brow furrowing.

“Why are you sorry?” she asks, and reaches for Sara again, but she moves away, leaning back against the table and avoiding Felicity’s eyes.

“We can’t do this.”

“Until,” Felicity says, trying to hope, trying to breathe, “until this is all over, right? Until we’re safe.”

Sara shakes her head, and Felicity is horrified to find tears welling in her eyes, drops down into her chair and stretches her eyes open, blinking at the tears until they go away.

“You’re a good person, Felicity,” Sara says, and her voice is flat, emotionless. She’s staring at the floor. “You should be with someone good. I want you to be with someone good.”

“But—“

“Do you want to know where I’ve been?” She looks up, into Felicity’s eyes. “What I’ve been doing?”

“Sure,” Felicity says numbly, holding eye contact.

“It’s called the League of Assassins. I trained under Ra’s al Ghul to become one of his most trusted and skilled assassins. I trained to kill, and I did. I killed and I killed and I killed.”

Felicity doesn’t flinch; doesn’t blink. “You told me you couldn’t leave. You told me they would go after your family.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Sara says, standing up to face her and slicing a hand through the air. “Every kill is a black mark on my soul, and I won’t risk contaminating you.” She spits those last words and turns away, disappearing somewhere into the lair, and Felicity stands up, picks up her purse and walks to the lair bathroom.

Locking the door, she sits down on the closed toilet and folds over herself, sobbing so hard she dry-heaves, sobbing so hard she can’t draw breath into her lungs, sobbing so hard her vision goes dark and she sees through Sara’s eyes instead, blinking hard and shaking her head and forcing herself to breathe so she can put her walls back up. She doesn’t want Sara in her head anymore.

Then she stands up, fixes her face, and goes back to work.

That night, she’s trying to fall asleep when Sara pushes at her mind, pushes and pushes until she finally lets her through and snaps, “What?”

“You need to be prepared. There’s no way for me to stay out of this fight. You’re probably going to get hurt.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” She shuts her off and stares at the ceiling.

The next weeks pass in a blur for Felicity. The people coming after Sara don't have cell signals, don't have GPS; Felicity's job seems to be reduced to announcing the latest sneak attack and hailing the cavalry. It's the most useless she's felt since she joined the team, and it doesn't help that she feels every single hit Sara takes. She sits at her computers and holds onto the edge of her desk, bowing her head and absorbing blow after blow, and when she goes home at night she curls up in bed and sobs. It's more pain than she's ever felt, and she's never been so afraid in her life.

Something happens with Nyssa al Ghul that Felicity doesn't really follow, and suddenly the fight is over, Sara is free and Felicity honestly has no idea what is going on. All she knows is Sara is joining the team and pushing into her mind one night to promise she won't get hit as much, the League assassins were too close to her in skill but regular criminals won't have her matched. Felicity listens to what she has to say and closes the connection without replying.

When they face the Clock King and Felicity leaves the lair to hack into the computers at the bank, she doesn't really think about it. She can't do her job from the lair and she's experienced all the pain there is to feel, so what is there to be afraid of, right?

Then the guy fires a gun and Felicity dives in front of Sara because, whatever, she's going to feel it anyway, and she can fuck up the trajectory of the bullet, and then she's on the ground and she realizes no, she was absolutely, completely wrong, because _this_ is the worst pain she's ever felt, this is agony, and Sara's on her knees beside her gasping with the same pain but applying pressure to the wound, and Felicity thinks... maybe this is okay. Taking a bullet for Sara. Maybe she'll fall asleep and this will all be over. Maybe an honourable end will supply some meaning to what she's gone through.

But she wakes up on a cot in the lair, and her whole body feels cottony soft and numb, and Sara is sitting beside her, one of Felicity's hands clasped in both of hers and her head bowed.

"Hey," Felicity says, and Sara looks at her, this hopeless, despairing look.

"Why did you do that?" Sara asks softly. "What would ever possess you to do that?"

Felicity presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth, swallows hard, and licks her lips. It feels like right after you get a cavity filled at the dentist. "I thought I told you," she says, feeling slightly muddled. "I thought I told you that I loved you."

"That doesn't... you don't jump in front of a bullet. Not for me. Not for anyone."

"Yeah," Felicity says, "I do. I did. Right?"

"Felicity, I need you to promise me you won't do that again. Not ever."

"Sara," Felicity says patiently, like Sara is the one who just isn't understanding something very, very simple. "I love you. Even if you won't let me touch you, I would much prefer for you to be alive."

"But..." Sara seems to be losing steam. "Maybe we should talk when you're a little less medicated."

"Does that mean you're going to stop holding my hand?" Felicity pouts, and Sara just looks at her for a long time before sighing.

"You took a bullet for me, so the least I owe you is some hand-holding."

"I would take them all, you know," Felicity says. "All the bullets."

"No, you won't. You're not allowed."

"You can't stop me!" Felicity says petulantly, and Sara presses her lips together, fighting a smile. "I'll go out and find some just to spite you."

"Then I'll follow you around and get in front of them. My reflexes are faster than yours."

"Oh yeah." Felicity rolls her eyes. "That's how I caught this one."

"You got lucky. Well, unlucky. Anyway, you're not taking any more bullets. I want you to stay alive too, you idiot, and if it comes down to me and you, you are the one to stay alive."

"Why should I be?"

"You know why."

"We're the same."

Sara does a double-take at that, actually looking surprised. "What are you talking about?"

Felicity waves her free hand vaguely and says, like it’s obvious, “We’re the same. We have the same soul.”

“No,” Sara says, staring at her, “we don’t.”

“How else do you explain—“ Felicity taps at her temple with one finger.

“It was a fluke, a fucked-up… thing that happened. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah,” Felicity says. “We have the same soul.”

Sara just shakes her head, not saying anything, and Felicity closes her eyes again.

Felicity is forced to take a few days off, completely against her will, and she mostly just lazes around her apartment in pyjamas and eats ice cream, because she can. In the middle of the third day, she answers a knock at the door and is surprised to find Sara there, impressed that she’d managed to get all the way there without even a hint of a brain wave.

“Hey,” she says, stepping back into her apartment. “Very sneaky.”

“How are you doing?” Sara says, walking in and looking around a bit wide-eyed, seeing the place for herself for the first time.

“I’m fine. I’ll be back at work… any minute now.” She watches Sara wander the perimeter of the living room and narrows her eyes. “Did you need something?”

Sara doesn’t look at her. “Can we talk for a minute?”

Felicity shrugs, then winces, and Sara looks up, like she felt that twinge of pain. “Sit down. I’ll get some water.”

When they’re settled, Sara twists her fingers together, staring down at her lap, and Felicity leans on the arm of the couch, looking toward the window. After a few minutes of silence, she gets up and walks over, leaning on the window sill.

Another minute passes, then Sara clears her throat and says, “I wanted to revisit what we talked about at the lair.”

Her mind goes to the first conversation they had in the lair, and she turns to look at Sara, not daring to hope.

“After you were shot,” Sara clarifies, and Felicity closes her eyes, blowing out a breath and turning back to the window.

“I was pretty doped up.”

“Some of the things you said… were concerning…”

“Oh please,” Felicity says under her breath, and Sara huffs a small laugh.

“You know I can hear you.”

“Whatever. Name your concerns.”

“Will you promise me you won’t ever do that again?”

Felicity crosses her arms over her chest, her shoulders hunching up toward her ears, even though the motion aggravates her wound. “I don’t think so.”

“I really wish you would.”

Turning around, she leans back against the sill, arms still crossed. “You want me to tell you I would choose my own life over yours if I had to. Because, what, my life is worth more? Save your breath. I’m not ever going to agree with you, and I rarely leave the lair anyway. It’s a moot point.”

Sara frowns. “I don’t think you devaluing your own life is a moot point.”

Throwing her hands up in frustration, Felicity takes a step forward and says, “Considering our lives equal is not devaluing my own life. Being in love with you and wanting you to _stay alive_ is not devaluing my own life. God, you are so hard-headed.”

Looking back down at her lap, Sara stares at her hands, palms up. “Being in love with me _is_ devaluing your life,” she murmurs, and Felicity starts toward her bedroom, turning back and pointing at Sara.

“Fuck you. If that’s all you have to say to me, don’t bother. Just leave me alone.” She walks into her bedroom and slams the door, crawling onto the bed and curling up into a tight little ball, silent tears soaking the knees of her pyjamas

XXX

_And it echoes when I breathe ‘til all you'll see is my ghost:  
empty vessel, crooked teeth; wish you could see._

“Felicity hates me,” Sara sobs into the phone, and there’s a long pause before Diggle clears his throat.

“What’s going on, Sara?”

“I need you to help me, please. Oliver’s useless and Laurel wouldn’t get it, I need… please help me.”

“Are you safe to drive?”

Sara’s standing just inside the glass exit doors of Felicity’s lobby, staring out at her motorcycle with tears streaming down her face, and she says, “Probably not.”

“Okay, I’ll come get you. You’re at Felicity’s? Don’t move.”

“Yeah, okay.”

She manages to stop crying by the time Diggle pulls up outside in a black SUV, smears her sleeves over her face as she climbs into the passenger seat. He pulls around the block into a parking lot, stopping under a light and turning off the car.

“I don’t know where to start,” Sara says.

“Just start.”

“Felicity and I… did she tell you how she found out I was coming home?” She looks over and Diggle frowns, shaking his head. “We had a… relationship… that no one knew about. A connection. She thought… I guess I led her to believe… no, I _told her_ that when I got back we would… I would… ugh. Be together.”

Diggle has an impeccable poker face. “What went wrong?”

“I’m a horrible person. A murderer. A cheater. I dedicated my life to perfecting the art of killing a man. No good person deserves a person like me, and Felicity is a _good_ person.”

“And her response?”

“She, um. Well, she doesn’t know any better. I mean, she says she loves me, but she. Doesn’t know better. If she grows to hate herself for loving a serial murderer… I would have ruined the most incredible person I’ve ever met. I can’t… _ruin_ her.”

For a minute or two, he stares silently out the driver’s side window. When he speaks again, it’s to the window. “Would you call Oliver a serial murderer?”

“Um. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What about me?”

“You—“

“What about all the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan right now?”

“That’s… different.”

“Do you think they come home thinking they’re murderers? I can tell you they do. Do you think every soldier should spend the rest of their life celibate because they fought in a war?”

“But I… I didn’t fight in a war.”

“Neither did Oliver.” He turns back to look at her.

“Oliver’s a mess. I don’t think you want to use him as an example.”

“Not an example. Perspective. Does Oliver deserve to be loved?”

Sara groans quietly.

“What if, in another universe, Oliver and Felicity fell in love. Would you tell him not to love her? Tell him he would ruin her? That she would be better off alone than in love with him?”

“Do you think I’m a good person?”

Exhaling through his nose, he looks past her. “I think your scales of goodness are arbitrary and unhelpful. You should be asking yourself if you could love her and treat her well.”

“What if she regrets loving me?”

“Have you ever regretted loving someone?”

Sara groans again, dropping her face into her hands.

“Is it really better for her to regret loving you because you refused to love her back?”

Sara groans louder, keeping her hands over her face for another minute. “I’ve gotta… wrap my head around this. I can’t decide whether you gave me advice or knocked me upside the head with it.”

“I’m here to help,” he says wryly, and she offers him a smile.

“Thank you.”

“Safe to drive now?”

“Yeah.”

He leaves her at her bike and she sits on it with her helmet in her hands, staring up at the building. She doesn’t exactly reach out, but she doesn’t have as many walls up as usual, and she just listens for a second. Felicity is probably asleep, so she just says, there alone on her bike in the middle of the night, “I love you. I’m trying. Please don’t give up on me yet.”

Felicity comes back to work and Sara keeps her distance, watching her when Felicity isn’t looking, which is pretty much all the time since Felicity is very determinedly ignoring her entire existence. Diggle moves around them in silence and Oliver looks bewildered most of the time, but he isn’t dumb enough to say anything.

Sara keeps her promise about getting hit less, but it still happens and those instances are the only time the connection between them opens, Sara saying breathlessly, “I’m sorry,” and Felicity, equally breathless, saying, “Are you okay?”

At least she still wants Sara to be alive, and Sara can’t help but draw hope from that, even though Felicity mostly wants everyone to be alive.

She knows she has to go back, but she’s terrified to do it, so she keeps putting it off, days and days of Felicity pretending she doesn’t exist, and it’s painful but it’s not as bad as actually being rejected. But Felicity… is changing, gradually, her expression darker in increments by the day, and Sara wouldn’t mind being ignored as long as Felicity was still smiling, but she isn’t. Sara can’t remember the last time she saw Felicity smile.

The next Sunday, Sara is at Felicity’s door again, standing outside and raising her hand to knock and then dropping her hand again. She does it at least six times before the door flies open and Felicity gives her an annoyed look.

“You’re making me nervous,” she says, turning back into the room, and Sara follows her in.

“Well, I’m nervous. Sorry.”

“You’d better not be nervous about telling me the same things you’ve been telling me since you got back, because Sara, I swear to God—“

“No,” Sara says, watching Felicity’s back as she pretends to be doing something more important than looking at Sara. “Kind of the opposite, actually.”

Felicity stills at that, but doesn’t turn around, and every muscle in her body is tensed—Sara can feel them. She closes her eyes and thinks about walking over there, wrapping her arms around Felicity’s waist and resting her chin on her shoulder, holding her close to Sara’s body until she finally lets go and relaxes against her.

“If I promise the message has changed, will you let me say what I need to say? Let me say all of it without interruption?”

Turning around finally, Felicity eyes her warily, waving her over to the couch. They sit in opposite corners, and Sara watches Felicity watching anything but Sara.

“I love you,” Sara says, and Felicity’s eyes fly to meet hers, but Sara isn’t sure she can do this looking into Felicity’s eyes, so she closes hers. “I don’t see goodness in myself, and it’s not—I don’t think I ever had goodness in me, but now my soul is dirty, and wrung out, and… I guess I feel like I’m set apart, like no one else is like me. When you said we were the same, my reflex was to correct you, to make sure you knew that you were so much better than me, so much purer, and it took me a while to realize that wasn’t the point.”

She shifts on the couch, rubbing a hand over her face, but keeps her eyes closed. “Whether or not we’re the same, we both love, and I think… I mean, I feel like… if there’s one good thing in me, it’s loving you. And then, if that’s true, doesn’t… can’t it possibly be that loving you could… make me better. Or, not even that, but if I could love you, if I could… make you happy, then wouldn’t I be doing something good? And can’t… can’t goodness be the choice to do something good?”

She’s crying now, and she blinks her eyes open, looking down at her lap and wiping her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about loving or being good. All I know is that I love you, and I want to make you happy. I would give anything to make you happy. So if that means me… giving you a piece of me, then it’s yours.” She brings both hands up to cover her face, drawing her knees up in front of her and sobbing into her hands.

She can feel that Felicity wants to cross the couch and comfort her—their emotions must be too close to the surface to conceal, they’re cycling between their minds—but she doesn’t and Sara thinks maybe, maybe that means that she… so Sara stands up, swallowing down her sobs and wiping at her face, and she starts toward the door because she doesn’t know what else to do.

Felicity catches up with her before she can get there, grabbing her hand and tugging her back into a hug, and Sara sobs again just at the feel of her. She wraps her arms around Felicity’s back, holding her as tight as she can without hurting her, and Felicity rubs her hand up and down Sara’s back, murmuring soothing noises.

“Did you change your mind?” Sara asks tearfully.

“About what?”

“Loving me.”

“No, baby. I just need a minute to adjust. I’ve been…” She sighs. “Trying to move on, I guess, but obviously it hasn’t been going well.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you, I’m so sorry.”

“I know, baby. You’ve been through so much. I’m sorry I swore at you.”

Sara doesn’t want to say _I deserved it_ even though she definitely did, so instead she snuffles a laugh and says, “Have you been thinking about that since you said it?”

“Maybe. It was pretty mean.”

Sara giggles and takes a step back, and she’s smiling and Felicity is smiling too and a huge weight is lifted off her chest, and they sigh almost in unison, which makes them smile bigger, and Sara reaches for Felicity’s hand.

“How many minutes do you need?” she asks, and Felicity tilts her head a little, still smiling.

“If you want to hang out for a bit, we could… watch a movie? Adjust?”

Sara nods, and Felicity pulls her back to the couch, dropping into the corner and tugging Sara down beside her, wrapping one arm around her waist and using her phone to bring up a movie on the TV. Sara sits very still and doesn’t curl into Felicity’s side, doesn’t want to push or initiate anything and just having Felicity’s body pressed against her side is enough, is more than enough, and she has no idea what movie they’re watching but hopefully Felicity is enjoying it.

“Hey,” Felicity murmurs. “You’re so tense.”

“Yeah.”

She dips her chin, nose brushing Sara’s cheek, and presses her lips to the curve of Sara’s neck.

Inhaling shakily, Sara says, “Enough minutes?”

“I think so.”

Sara turns, pulling her knees up under her on the couch, but then her forward momentum stops and she sits back on her heels. Her hands limp in her lap, she looks Felicity over, chewing the inside of her cheek. “I love you,” she says, and Felicity smiles, leaning forward and taking one of her hands, forearm resting on Sara’s thigh.

“I love you,” she says back. “We’re okay.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah.” She tugs on Sara’s hand, pulling her forward and reaching up for her face with the other hand.

They meet in the middle and Sara sighs into the kiss, pressing forward until Felicity’s back is against the arm of the couch and their torsos meet, and then she shifts one knee over to the other side of Felicity’s lap and Felicity lifts her legs up onto the cushion. Sara groans, tilting her hips forward, and she can feel her forehead furrowing, the physical sensations so much after months with the memory of one kiss and one… superphysical experience.

She lays her body over Felicity’s and presses their foreheads together, whispering against her lips, “It feels so good. I can’t believe you’re here. I love you so much.”

Felicity arches up against her, bringing their mouths back together, and Sara moves her hands to Felicity’s hips, pausing with her hands on the waistband of Felicity’s yoga pants until Felicity pushes up against them. She thinks for a second she should pull back, give it another minute, not rush through this, but Felicity groans into her mouth, lifting her hips again, and Sara curls her fingers under the elastic, tugging it down her hips.

She reaches between her legs, one gentle, testing stroke, finding first that she’s very much ready and second—

“Oh my God,” Sara gasps, the sensation shuddering through her body.

“I’m sorry,” Felicity says, “I can’t—“

“No, it’s fine,” Sara says, stroking her again and exhaling hard. “I just can’t promise—“ Again. “—to be at the top of my game.”

Felicity whimpers, clutching at her shoulders, and Sara braces her free hand on the cushion, squeezing her eyes shut as she moves almost by muscle memory, her thinking process all but shot. It’s not like touching herself, and it’s not quite like someone else touching her; it’s everything at once, all the sensations repeating and reflecting and cycling into something exponential. She keeps moving because it’s all she can do, slipping one finger inside and then another, pressing the heel of her hand instead of trying for precision with her thumb and then dropping her hips, just rocking down into her.

Whimpers turn to cries and Sara’s got her forehead resting on the arm of the couch next to where Felicity’s neck arches, and it’s all she can do to keep breathing, her chest heaving and her hips rocking, rocking, and then Felicity cries out her name and she breaks apart, shuddering and gasping with the force of it. She loses track of—everything—and when she comes back to herself Felicity has sunk further into the corner of the couch, one hand stroking the nape of Sara’s neck and the other one rubbing up and down her back, and Sara frees her hand from between them, wiping it on her own shirt and laying her head down on Felicity’s chest.

“Was that… good?” she says, and Felicity makes a disapproving sound.

“It felt good.”

“I know, but it… I don’t know, that was something else. Is it going to be like that every time?”

“I hope so,” Felicity mutters, blowing a burst of air at the top of Sara’s head, and Sara laughs, poking gently at her side.

“I think I’m allowed to question the particularities of our fucked-up psychic link.”

“Not when that’s how it chooses to fuck us up,” Felicity says on a sigh, her words starting to slow.

“Fair,” Sara whispers back, and she closes her eyes, allowing the sleepiness to drag them both under.

XXX

_And they call me under, and I'm shaking like a leaf,  
and they call me under, and I wither underneath in this storm._

Felicity surfaces from sleep like from a deep pool, scrunching up her face and inhaling deeply, and— _oh_. That’s Sara’s shampoo she smells, and Sara’s weight soft and warm on top of her, and she’s smiling before she can even open her eyes. She shifts slightly and then Sara is shifting too, her hand gripping Felicity’s side before she picks up her head, hair in her face and a slow-growing grin.

Raising one hand to sweep her hair back out of her face, Sara then touches her fingertips to Felicity’s jaw, moving forward to kiss her, and it’s so soft and languid and Felicity isn’t sure she’s ever used that word in a sentence before but that’s what this is, languid and perfect.

“Guess what I realized,” Felicity says when Sara has set her head back down on Felicity’s shoulder, her hand stroking over her cheek.

“What?”

She slips her hand down a bit from the small of Sara’s back to the hem of her shirt, toying with it. “You’ve seen me undressed, but I’ve never seen you.”

“Oh no,” Sara says softly, inching forward to press her lips to Felicity’s neck. “We’ll have to change that.”

“Glad you agree.”

They don’t move, though; not yet. There’s something about this, lying squished together on a couch, something about the solidity of their bodies next to one another. It’s peace, but it’s also something else. Sex is sex, but this feels like love made physical, made corporeal.

Or, more likely, Felicity is overthinking this the way she overthinks everything in her life, but still she doesn’t move, not until her stomach roars its protest.

“Oh my God,” she says, laughing, and they both sit up. “I’ll order something, what do you like to eat?”

Sara drops her head and narrows her eyes, chewing the inside of her cheek, and Felicity wonders but doesn’t ask, just squeezing her arm tighter around Sara’s waist and trying to think of food that might have good memories, might remind her of home.

“There’s a great pizza place that also delivers pasta, wanna see a menu?”

Sara nods and Felicity presses a kiss to her temple, getting up to find the menu in a kitchen drawer.

She’s a bit uncomfortable in her clothes and she figures Sara might be too, so when she hands her the menu she says, “I’m gonna have a quick shower, you go ahead and order enough for two.”

Raising an eyebrow, Sara looks up slowly and drags her eyes up over Felicity’s body before saying, “You aren’t going to invite me in?”

Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Felicity crosses her arms, biting back a smile. “You can go next. I _will be_ undressing you later, but I think our, um, situation makes shower—uh, showering together a bad idea. Unsafe.”

Sara shrugs her eyebrows, smirking, and looks back down at the menu. “Can’t argue with that.”

By the time they’re clean and dressed—and Sara looks amazing in Felicity’s clothes, FYI, all that muscle makes everything fit a little tighter and, wow, yeah, it’s good—the food has arrived and they sit overlapping on the couch, talking quietly about everything they haven’t been able to talk about, Sara’s family and Felicity’s depression and Oliver’s… everything, and Sara tells her about Diggle’s reality check.

They trade kisses and smudges of pasta sauce, and then they watch the rest of the movie to give the food time to settle. It’s a documentary about whales, mostly because Felicity had just chosen the first movie she saw and also she watches a lot of documentaries, a habit exacerbated by the emotional black hole that was the past few months, because documentaries don’t make you feel a lot of evil emotions, usually.

When the movie ends, they sit in silence on the couch, and Felicity can feel Sara pulling back, thinks that maybe there will always be a push-and-pull here because maybe Sara will never fully believe that this is exactly how things are supposed to be.

She reaches out and curls her hand around Sara’s, standing up and tugging Sara into the bedroom, and Felicity goes and stands in front of the mirror. Sara smiles, coming up behind her and wrapping her arms around her waist, resting her chin on Felicity’s shoulder.

“You know I lived for this view,” Sara says, and Felicity takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a second.

She turns, taking Sara’s face in her hands and kissing her. “God, I love you,” she says, kissing her again. “I need you. I need to be able to touch you.”

“You’ve got it,” Sara says softly, taking Felicity’s hands in hers. “You said you would—remember? You hoped for both of us, and I know—I know I made it hard. But you’ve got it now.” She moves their hands together to her waist, pressing Felicity’s hands there and moving her own hands up to Felicity’s shoulders.

They hold eye contact for a moment, and Felicity’s smile grows at the same pace her fingers move to the hem of Sara’s shirt. She slides her hands under, first, smoothing up the curve of her back and then around, down over her stomach, and she sighs at the feel of the muscles there, runs her fingers over them again and again like it will be her only chance to memorize them.

She finally lifts the shirt, tugging it off over Sara’s head and then brushing her hands over Sara’s hair and down to cup her jaw. Sara inhales shakily, squeezing her eyes shut, and Felicity frowns.

“You know I’ve seen this much before.”

“Not this close,” Sara whispers, and Felicity closes her eyes, touching their foreheads together.

“I don’t have to. If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”

“No, I… I want you to.” She blows out a breath, opening her eyes and meeting Felicity’s, and backs toward the bed, taking Felicity’s hands and pulling her along. When she reaches the bed she sits down and shifts back, lying down flat and lifting her hands up to cover her eyes.

Felicity moves carefully to kneel over her, reaching for her face and nudging her hands away so she can kiss her, cupping her jaw and focusing fully on her mouth until Sara relaxes a little more, and then turning her face to kiss just under the corner of her jaw. She presses a slow line of kisses down Sara’s neck, hearing another shaky inhale as she brushes her hands over Sara’s shoulders and traces her eyes over the skin bared around her bra, smoothing her fingertips over jagged scars and then pressing her lips to them.

Passing over the bra, Felicity studies Sara’s stomach, running her fingers over those same muscles and tracing the outlines, finding each scar and kissing it, lingering and caressing love into every mark on her skin. Wrapping her hands around Sara’s sides, she presses a line of kisses just above the waistband of her pants, then moves back up to Sara’s face, Sara’s eyes shut tight.

Sighing, Felicity strokes her fingers over the planes of Sara’s face, then flutters kisses—the line of her cheekbone, the arch of her eyebrow, the tip of her nose—until Sara’s mouth curves up and her eyes blink open, squinting slightly, and Felicity smiles back.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs, fingers still tracing the outline. “Every inch of you, every… molecule.” Sara blinks, and Felicity murmurs again, “Beautiful,” leaning in and kissing her as she skims her hands down slowly, brushing over the fabric of her sports bra and up under the elastic at the back, easing it up and over Sara’s raised arms. When their eyes meet again, Sara is frowning slightly, and Felicity frowns back, kissing her gently.

“You gonna be okay up here?” she asks, and Sara inhales sharply, closing her eyes and nodding, so Felicity kisses her again and moves down her body, looking and touching, kissing and caressing. She murmurs, “Beautiful,” into the side of her breast, kisses it and turns to the other to repeat the process. She keeps her focus there until Sara starts to sigh and shift under her, then moves down again, spending another minute going over her stomach before she slips her fingers under the waistband of her pants and looks up.

The pause is clear enough, and though Sara keeps her eyes closed, she nods, bringing her hands up to tangle in her own hair. Felicity tugs down, pulls the pants down over Sara’s legs, her eyes following the newly bared skin. Her legs are no less muscular than the rest of her, and no less scarred, but Felicity wouldn’t dare linger on them now, just runs her hands up over them after she’s discarded the pants and underwear.

She figures she’s made Sara wait long enough, especially after the complete lack of waiting earlier in the day, so she settles between her legs, wrapping her arms around Sara’s thighs. She looks up again, her hands stroking the skin on the inside of Sara’s thighs, and Sara has her head tilted back, the cords in her neck straining. She won’t ask for anything, won’t demand, and Felicity thinks that’s something that’s going to change very quickly. Hopefully.

With half a mind on what happened earlier, Felicity runs a gentle tongue between Sara’s legs, and she jerks at the sensation, but Felicity feels only a twinge of it.

“You got your blocks up, baby?”

“Isn’t that safer?” Sara replies, voice tight.

“I don’t want you to be focused on that. Just focus on me, baby.”

Sara hesitates, but nods, and when Felicity touches her again it shakes both of them. Felicity takes a careful breath before moving forward in earnest, using her tongue to search out the best reactions, determined even when she has to take breaks to gasp in breaths, when her whole body is quaking and she holds onto Sara’s thighs for dear life.

It’s probably not the top of her game, either, but it doesn’t matter when it’s like this, when every touch brings them closer and they’re both completely overwhelmed with sensation. They both come apart, and Felicity rests her cheek on Sara’s thigh for a moment, muscles quivering and not yet capable of carrying her up the bed. Sara seems to recover quicker, reaching down and tugging Felicity up by the armpits, and Felicity giggles non-stop.

When they’re lying next to each other, Sara frowns more exaggeratedly, pushing out her bottom lip. “You still have all your clothes on,” she says, and Felicity rests her head on the pillow, raising her eyebrows.

“I can’t move.”

“May I?” she asks, and Felicity would rather not move even an inch, but Sara is completely naked and it’s only fair.

Felicity nods, and Sara inches forward to press a kiss to her lips, slipping her hands up under her t-shirt and pushing it up and over Felicity’s arms. She does it so carefully, Felicity doesn’t feel like she has to help at all, so she closes her eyes and smiles and lets Sara undress her. She leaves her in her bra and underwear, although Sara’s are lost to the black hole of not-the-bed, and then Sara wraps her arms around Felicity and pulls the comforter up around them, and for the first time they’re lying in a bed together, in Felicity’s bed, and Felicity thinks it may as well be heaven.

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she murmurs drowsily, and she doesn’t need to open her eyes because so much of their bodies are in contact and there’s something magical about that. There shouldn’t be, not in simple physical contact, but there is and she accepts it.

“I’m here,” Sara murmurs back. “I love you.”

Felicity sighs. “Love you.”

They go back to work and they are Very Professional about it, which combined with their unwillingness to announce their relationship to the world or to anyone at all, results in Diggle giving them meaningful looks and Oliver… getting a little confused. They’re both happier, happy for the first time in months, and Diggle just knows and doesn’t say anything.

Late one night, Felicity is waiting for Sara in her car, because the fact that they’re always connected makes sleeping in different places seem kind of silly, plus they don’t have all that much free time, so Sara has essentially moved into Felicity’s apartment, and it’s not, like, codependency or anything but they have a psychic link and, whatever, no one even knows so no one is judging them for it and Felicity needs to get over herself.

Anyway, Sara stayed down in the lair with Oliver to clean up after a sparring session, and she shows up in Felicity’s car breathless and flushed and grinning and kind of a mess, and Felicity grins back and raises an eyebrow.

“So, Oliver just came onto me,” Sara says, and Felicity’s grin turns into open-mouthed shock and horror. “Yeah, he said we still have a connection and there’s no use denying it and we could both use a little release, couldn’t we?” and Sara is laughing and Felicity can’t help laughing too, even though she’s still horrified. “I said, ‘Oliver, didn’t you ever wonder why my mood has changed so drastically lately?’ and he said, ‘Well, I just assumed you were getting used to being home.’” She does a fake deep voice for Oliver and Felicity has tears in her eyes now.

“So I said, ‘Yes, being home and being with Felicity,’ and he just kind of looked at me, like, okay? So you have a new friend, great? And I said, ‘Oliver, Felicity and I are together,’ and he stared at me for another minute. ‘I just thought, since we have so much history’—which, come on man, it was not _good_ history! And I said, ‘Felicity and I have history too,’ and he looked so confused, I’m there trying to be nice and he’s looking at me like I’m complex algebra and I almost laughed.

“’Well, I’m… very happy for you,’ and he looked like a kicked puppy so I walked over and patted his cheek and kissed it and I don’t think that helped and then I ran up the stairs and far, far away.”

Felicity shakes her head, smiling, and starts the car. Halfway to her apartment, she says as casually as she can, “Not at all tempting?”

Sara doesn’t say anything and when Felicity glances over she’s just staring, a very unamused look on her face.

“I’m just asking!”

The silence continues, and Felicity grips the steering wheel like she’s trying to strangle a snake, turning into the parking garage and pulling into her space.

“All I’m saying is a fucked-up psychic link doesn’t obligate a person to a relationship. Oliver’s a great guy and—“

“ _Please_ shut up,” Sara says, and Felicity presses her lips together hard, widening her eyes at the wall in front of her. An instant later, Sara’s pulled her knees up under her on the seat, leaning over the centre console and wrapping her arms around Felicity’s neck, pressing her nose to Felicity’s cheek. “That fucked-up psychic link hasn’t obligated me to shit,” she says, her voice soft on the curses. “It gave me access to the best thing I’ve ever had and ever will have. That fucked-up psychic link saved my life.”

Felicity sighs, closing her eyes and slumping slightly, and Sara drops her chin to rest on Felicity’s shoulder, one of her hands stroking over Felicity’s cheek.

“I can’t tell you that I’d love you without it, because I don’t… I wouldn’t know you the same way, and that’s why I love you, right? Because I know you. I know you and I love you and I’m not interested in anything else. Not Oliver, not anyone. Only you. Okay?”

“I know,” Felicity says shamefully. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m happy to reassure you. I’d rather you ask than stew in it and convince yourself of something else.”

“Which I would definitely do.”

“So don’t, okay? If you need to ask, ask. I’ll answer.”

Felicity sighs again, reaching a hand up to wrap around Sara’s wrist and find her hand, holding it in her lap. “You’re good, you know?”

Sara doesn’t respond to that, but she tips her face up just enough to kiss Felicity’s jaw, and Felicity turns to her, touching Sara’s cheek and kissing her gently. “Let’s go upstairs and snuggle,” Sara says, and Felicity smiles, staring at her for a moment.

She’s beautiful, and her eyes crinkle just a bit when she smiles, and the darkness comes in passes, now; at times entirely absent. She’s happy, and she’s beautiful, and Felicity couldn’t imagine a better person to a) develop a spontaneous psychic link with, and b) love.

Someone was looking out for them. Someone had something better in mind.

Might as well make the most of it.

_I feel it, and they call me under, and I'm shaking like a leaf,  
and they call me underneath to this storm._


End file.
